The story I heard from reading Campbell’s myth series of books was that snakes were originally considered powerful and wise creatures because they knew the secrets of immortality—they could shed their skin and become young again. This got wrapped up into the general Semitic set of myths and tropes, where the snake re-appears in the… Garden of Eden tempting Adam & Eve into the Fall. Eventually it and the angel ‘Satan’ got wrapped up into a new Manichean framework as the source of all evil and the Evil One himself, whereupon the powerful and wise aspects became negative (my good mentor is ‘wise’; your evil mentor is ‘calculating’).
The cold part is probably just literal: I’ve never picked up a warm-feeling snake.
The story I heard from reading Campbell’s myth series of books was that snakes were originally considered powerful and wise creatures because they knew the secrets of immortality—they could shed their skin and become young again. This got wrapped up into the general Semitic set of myths and tropes, where the snake re-appears in the… Garden of Eden tempting Adam & Eve into the Fall. Eventually it and the angel ‘Satan’ got wrapped up into a new Manichean framework as the source of all evil and the Evil One himself, whereupon the powerful and wise aspects became negative (my good mentor is ‘wise’; your evil mentor is ‘calculating’).
The cold part is probably just literal: I’ve never picked up a warm-feeling snake.